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Saturday, January 6, 2007

Genesis 4:12

Continuing on from what I was thinking about Friday, the story of Cain only gets more confusing after Cain offs his brother. As punishment, God tells him to piss off to someplace else.

This seems to do the trick in terms of punishment, because Cain goes into a panic and worries about what other people will do when they find out he's killed his brother.

"I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth," he bemoans. "And it shall come to pass that every one that findeth* me shall slay me."

See, again Cain is showing that he's not very bright.

Every one that findeth you shall slay you? You can only be slain once, bonehead. But more importantly, who is this every one? You've killed one-fourth of the Earth's population; as long as you give Mom and Dad a bit of distance, there exists no one else to worry about.

But God, perhaps accepting that Cain wasn't really an example of His best work, says (I'm paraphrasing): "Don't worry about it. Look, I'm going to put this mark on your head. It says, 'DO NOT KILL.' Anyone messes with you and I will fuck their shit up. OK?"

Cain reckons this about the best deal he's going to get and he heads off to the land of Nod, where, according to Genesis 4:17, "Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch."

What? What wife? Where did she come from? And why doesn't she get billing? It's not like the Bible was trying to save column space. Wherever the hell she came from, presumably the entire human population would still fit into a Chrysler Voyager and no one could be arsed to ask her name?

2 comments:

Gee, Chris, you'd have to go and point out Cain's wife. It's supposed to be one of those things which decent people don't talk about, but if you really don't know, she'd have been his sister! Now, don't you feel dirty?

Lot's wife didn't get a name, either, and all she did was to look back (with fondness or wistfullness, one suposes) upon the land of Sodom. Thoughts about that one?

You know, Chris... you really should write your own version of The Bible. I would request that you have many quotes similar to "Anyone messes with you and I will fuck their shit up." coming from God. I really enjoyed that. :)

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Who's writing this?

Hola. I'm Chris Cope, author of the books The Way Forward and Cwrw am Ddim. I'm originally from Austin, Texas, but through a series of terrible and wonderful events called "life," I now reside in Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland -- specifically the bit that is Penarth, Wales. Occasionally I write things.